It's difficult to rate a collection of short stories, especially when it concerns different styles and different literary genres. Therefore, 4/5 stars represents the arithmetical mean between the rates I gave for each story. I will briefly motivate my choice to give the maximum number of stars to some stories and I will skip going into details for the other ones (it's not a matter of critics, but rather one of literary tastes and subjectivity). The Living has such an unexpected but still wonderful end. I was 100% percent positively surprised by it. Beneath the Skin concentrates on a very interesting and unique character. It also reveals small parts from a different new world, which is something that makes literature very thrilling.
However, I did enjoy all of the stories as they are well written pieces, with strong narrative voices.
I started reading these short stories without looking at the blurbs on them. ..the only draw back for all of them was that they really were short..lol..some of them were too short because the story teller really draws you into the story and just when your heart is beating heavily, your blood is pumping, you want more..its over. I really wish they were longer,some of the stories were so good that they should be made into full length novels...but then thats what good writing is isnt it?